EmailSan Jose, Calif., police say a local woman with no criminal record replaced orange juice bottles in a Starbucks cold box with tainted ones – and they are puzzled about why she may have done it.
Ramineh Behbehanian, 50, will face charges of suspicion of poisoning and attempted murder, police said.
Image credit: San Jose Police Department
The Starbucks, located on the 6000 Block of Snell Avenue in South San Jose, Calif., was evacuated Monday evening after a customer spotted a woman switching bottles in the cold box at the front of the store with those in her bag, according to police.
As the witness was notifying Starbucks employees of the woman’s suspicious activity, police said, the suspect apparently overheard the conversation and fled the scene abruptly. A Starbucks employee was able to record the license plate of the woman’s car.
The San Jose Fire Department responded to the scene after Starbucks employees examined the bottles and found the contents had a toxic smell to them, police said.
The bottles were tested with hazardous materials equipment and were found to contain a mixture of isopropyl alcohol, or rubbing alcohol, police added.
Later that evening, police took Behbehanian into custody after she was found to be the owner of the car leaving the scene.
“Right now, we do not have any indication of further threats,” Sgt. Jason Dwyer, a spokesman for the San Jose Police Department, told ABC News. ”We believe she acted alone and, so far, we have no further information leading us to believe that she was a part of a group.”
Behbehanian indicated that she planned to hire an attorney, police said, but they did not know if she had yet done so.
She was expected to be arraigned within the next 48 hours, Dwyer said, but a court date had not been set. In the meantime, Behbehanian was being held without bail at the Elmwood Complex Women’s Facility.
Police were still investigating a motive for the alleged incident.
A spokesman for Starbucks, Zack Hutson, told ABC News that employees of the Snell Avenue Starbucks went above and beyond what they were supposed to do.
“Our partners are trained that safety is our No. 1 concern and, in instances like this, they did exactly the right thing in calling the police,” Hutson said. “Our partners are always trained to monitor the store, including the cold case and lobby area, and to report any specious behavior.”
Starbucks employees later emptied the contents of the rest of the cold case as a precautionary measure. Other Starbucks in the area were also warned to inspect their cold cases and to make sure everything was properly sealed.
“No one consumed the juice and, again, our partners and our customers did the right thing by acting quickly,” said Hutson. “We destroyed the juice [and so did] our partner in the other area.”
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This is the very reason why I never buy anything in separate containers in a public refrigerators you never ever know who just might do something like this.
Posted by: Carol | April 30, 2013, 5:59 pm 5:59 pm
Ohhhhhhhhh K. Alllllllllllrighty then. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh K. Strange.
Posted by: Gene | April 30, 2013, 6:11 pm 6:11 pm
The world is getting sicker and sicker, and sicker, and sicker, and sicker, and sicker.
Posted by: John Appleseed | April 30, 2013, 6:30 pm 6:30 pm
Behbehanian………this wouldn’t be an Iranian muslim name would it?
Posted by: bunnysaysitall | April 30, 2013, 6:33 pm 6:33 pm
Bunny, that was my thought when I saw the name.
Posted by: TheBearSpirit | April 30, 2013, 6:52 pm 6:52 pm
I was wondering if she was planning on coming back a few minutes later to buy a bottle. She may have been planning to sue Starbucks, claiming they had sold her a container of poison. She wouldn’t have to drink it, just spill a little out, present the bottle and say she had drunk some of it.
As for her name, it is more likely that it is of Armenian or Persian derivation. Names ending in “ian” are consistent with those two groups, for example, Robert Kardashian, father of the infamous sisters was of Armenian heritage.
Posted by: laylah b | April 30, 2013, 7:45 pm 7:45 pm
I believe she was not trying to hurt anyone. What I think she was trying to do was plant tainted juice there and either she would come back or send one of her friends in to purchase the drink and later say that there was something in it and sue Starbucks. Not a really smart idea, in the event someone did purchase it before she got back. She should be charged with attempted murder at this point, even though it may not have been her intention. This just reminds me of the finger in the chili lady. That didn’t work out either.
Posted by: Shane Brown | April 30, 2013, 8:05 pm 8:05 pm
I think the name could be Armenian.
Posted by: Les | April 30, 2013, 9:32 pm 9:32 pm
When I clicked on it, I thought it was about O.J. Simpson…..
Posted by: ACE1978 | April 30, 2013, 9:52 pm 9:52 pm
Friends laugh and call me paranoid, but I’ve always been nervous about using the ‘community’ condiments left on restaurant tables and even eating at salad bars. Who knows if someone think they’re being funny by slipping drugs into the salt or spitting a wad into the open salad dressing. People are crazy and cruel.
Posted by: Whatever | April 30, 2013, 10:49 pm 10:49 pm
She looks a little nuttsy…
Posted by: ZZbar | April 30, 2013, 11:41 pm 11:41 pm
I too thought it was about O.J. Simpson when I saw the headline.
Posted by: rboyd | May 1, 2013, 1:45 am 1:45 am
That’s a man, baby.
Posted by: Austin P | May 1, 2013, 3:02 am 3:02 am
some people are completely insane. this was a food poisoning attempt. this stuff has been going on since the days of the late 1980′s tylonol pill scare. this kiind of crap doesn’t happen when the republicans are in power, so many obama haters doing things like this or blowing up stuff. good thing for me i don’t drink starbucks anything. starbucks is corporate coffee, anyway. furthermore anybody with a last name ending with “ian” or phlem in the pronunciation of their name, i stay clear of. lock this woman up and throw away the key!
Posted by: chris cox | May 1, 2013, 7:43 am 7:43 am
What’s worse about this story is that people do not realize how the radical terrorists or copy cats can unseal and reseal most common sealed containers without being detected by the untrained eye and potentially the trained eye. All you have to do is learn how the packaging systems work and improvise methods to create from scratch a counterfeit adulterated product or to careful remove the seal without damaging and reseal so to look as not tampered with.
The issues with sealed products alone scare me enough to reconsider the items I buy based on the packaging the items come sealed in. There are ranges of packaging security integrity… though I’m sure like any money counterfeiters… there are packaging counterfeiters.
Main thing this event is doing to me, is driving another point across to the public that we are not in a safe environment like some people think. We are literally legally or illegally at war.
Main point is we are at war and we have so many ex-Pat, aliens, enemy combatants and degenerates that are living off our welfare and social security systems we need to combat them. I am wondering if the leadership of the US is so desperate to look like it’s doing something, they actually let all these degenerates in to divide CIA style and come back playing savior looking like the come back King (for whomever takes credit for saving everyone from evil) for the 2020 Solar/Elliot Economic Cycle upswing.
The US let too many people that should have been liquidated in WWII stay alive. We shouldn’t of even let POW’s into our country… however we let POW’s into our military, intelligence and foreign service. Poop, we let them take over our Sheriff’s and State Police Posts on top of local law enforcement. We even let the POW’s and their degenerate decent lead the US as public officials.
Where-as most of the other countries that took POW’s executed them because they knew the risks and dangers they posed to the world based on what their past evidence demonstrated. I suppose the US agreed with the POW’s like degenerates also and that is why the country is degenerating so fast.
From what I can tell, the brain damaging of the US was most likely due to the German chemical industry that was most deadly corrupted by the NAZI’s to become the largest pests (pesticide, herbicide, pharmacides, dies, artificial food, artificial flavors/fragrances, other drug manuf., etc.) on the planet.
Axis POW’s, their allies and other alien combatants (armed or unarmed) that don’t like the US or it’s citizens either are right here in our homeland and even homeland defenses. Why else or how else would you make the US worth less… send in all the know-it-alls from Europe that broke and destroyed their own homelands? That people group seems to fit the CIA divide and re-conquer the US strategy role the best.
Posted by: James | May 1, 2013, 10:15 am 10:15 am
What was slipped into our water that’s making everyone want to kill each other? SMH
Posted by: Jinx | May 1, 2013, 11:11 am 11:11 am
iWheither it was a Wendy’s fast food scam or an attempt at murdering people, It’s sick anyway you look at it. I’m sure this mentally ill woman has a filthy house full of abused children as well.
This artical doesn’t match the video report. I feel that the customer was the one that spotted this woman and when she ran the employee ran out an got the plate number. In the vidoe they give great credit to the Starbucks employee policys for safety and their camera serveilance that got the number. Real nice Starbucks! I’m wondering if they will go out of their way to protect the puplic from another sick copycat attempt. Orange juice is something most moms buy for their children, so I thank the lady that observed this woman and acted on it!
Posted by: helen | May 1, 2013, 11:12 am 11:12 am
Not to sound bigoted. Could be a “gypsy”. Some elements of this group are known to pull stunts for economic gain such as fake “slip and falls” in stores, staged auto accidents where they pull in front of a car and the victim rear ends their vehicle. These con artists then claim soft tissue injuries and collect payoffs from insurance companies. I worked for a CA insurance company many years ago and agents were warned by our claims departments to keep our business clients aware that these groups in CA like to target businesses.
Posted by: Winston | May 1, 2013, 11:48 am 11:48 am